Inner Grace
by Silent Memento
Summary: Peleliu wasn't supposed to have any resistance. It wasn't supposed to be the bloodbath that it was. Unfortunately, things never seem to go as planned in this war. Two drabbles of the Little Resistance chapter. February challenge for the FPA.
1. Chapter 1

The Higgins boat slithered through the water as a snake would slither through wet grass. The passengers numbered nine: three veterans of the Makin raid and six recruits, all tensed at the prospect of invading the lonely island of Peleliu. The hot tropic sun beat down on the young soldiers with a vengeance, burning their necks and causing general discomfort amongst them. Only Sergeant Sullivan, their hard-nosed leader, and Corporal Roebuck, the toughened unofficial second-in-command, seemed to be unaffected by the harsh rays.

Even Corporal Miller, the last of the three veterans, was sweating profusely and wiping his brow with his arm every minute or so. Koopman and Polonsky seemed to be affected the most, as both were panting heavily and leaning against the side of the Higgins in exhaustion.

Near the back of the boat, a young Marine who was a little less than eighteen years old had his helmet off, revealing a patch of buzzed, dark-brown hair. His hazel eyes were fixated on the metal floor, as he wiped the sweat off of his face with his left hand, feeling the stubble causing a little resistance.

"You alright, Holliday?" one of the other recruits asked in confusion, looking at the young marine.

Jerry Holliday didn't answer immediately. After a while, he muttered, "I'm fine," to the fellow recruit.

However, he was anything but fine. He was just as nervous as the rest of his fellow recruits. He grasped the Thompson he held as though it was the only thing that kept him alive. He knew that he should not have been alive to this point.

Born in the middle part of St. Louis City, Holliday was the result of a drunken Catholic blacksmith and a careless Jewish teacher. He had nearly died at birth. Amazingly, his mother had survived the ordeal as well as himself. His family had always been disappointed in him. He didn't display any extraordinary qualities, nor did he stand out in any way. He was antisocial, violent at times, and genuinely an asshole to people he didn't know or respect.

In fact, the only people he did respect were those who joined the military. He spent his time reading, writing, and thinking of more plots for his stories. His father had criticized him for that, saying that it was a 'pansy profession.' He had grown furious over the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and he decided to join the armed forces, despite being underage. The hardest part was the weight. He had always been underweight. He stuffed himself full of food before the weight test, and surprisingly, he had passed with a few pounds to spare.

Many grueling days later had led to him being deployed to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. He couldn't care less about Hitler and the Germans, despite rumors of Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. He didn't consider himself Jewish, even though he had already had a bar-mitzvah. In fact, he didn't even believe in a god or a higher power. As a result, the religion on his dog tags said "agnostic" instead of "Jewish" or "Roman-Catholic."

A loud noise brought him to his senses. It was a shell, and despite being badly aimed, it still scared the living daylights out of him.

"Holy sh-" Koopman began before he was interrupted by another shell that landed just in front of them, barely missing the metal boat.

"What the hell?" yelled Polonsky in simultaneous anger and fear. "I thought there wasn't supposed to be any resistance!"

"Little resistance doesn't mean that there isn't any resistance at all, Polonsky," growled Roebuck. "It just means that there isn't as much resistance here as there would be if you invaded Japan itself."

After Roebuck's sentence, another shell blew up the Higgins boat on their left. The soldiers on that boat – recruits and veterans alike – didn't even get a chance to scream before they were blown to bits. Some of those bits landed on the metal floor or, even worse, on top of the new recruits.

To make matters even worse than they already were, heavy machine gun fire began to sound out, mingling with the screams of the soldiers that the bullets hit.

"Keep your heads down!" yelled Sullivan, ducking before he finished the sentence.

Holliday almost failed to comply with the order as a stray bullet whizzed by his head, barely clipping his helmet. He then ducked and stayed there, not even daring to take a peek.

"Thirty seconds!" yelled the pilot of the Higgins, his voice tense.

The thirty seconds seemed more like an eternity with all of the bullets flying around and the shells seeming to land everywhere except for the small boat. The younger Marines began to quiver nervously, and one of them, Koopman, raised his head, as if looking for a way to get the hell out of the boat.

"We've got to get the hell off this boat!" he screamed, betraying his panicked state of mind.

"Not yet, Koopman!" Sullivan yelled back in a somewhat calm voice. "If we do that, we'll get shot by the machine guns."

"Not yet?" yelled Koopman incredulously, his head still down. "We're sitting du-"

His voice was permanently cut off by a shot from a Japanese rifle. His head exploded in a shower of blood, and bits of his brain splashed all over a few of the recruits, prompting screams.

Even Sullivan had a change of heart after that. "Everyone, get off the boat!" he yelled.

A well-placed shell hit the front of the Higgins just a second afterward, plunging Holliday into darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Holliday began to choke on the salty water that threatened to drown him. He looked to his left to see a soldier being torn to shreds by bullets. He swam up to the surface, breathing in water at first. He was about to panic when he breathed in air. He swore that he'd never take such a wondrous thing for granted again; at least, before a stray bullet whizzed over his head. Then he forgot all about what he had thought.

He quickly floundered over to the beach where he saw Miller call in air support on a radio. He watched gratefully as the airstrike leveled the bunker that held the machine guns. Then he felt a tap on his shoulder. He whirled around to see Roebuck looking at him calmly.

"Looks like the Devil didn't want you just yet," he growled before running over to a nearby trench.

Holliday let out a sigh and followed the corporal while making sure to keep his head down. The sniping of Koopman was burned into his brain. He'd keep his head down for good. He then noticed a marine hide behind a tree for cover. What happened next shocked him to his core. A hidden mine blew off both of the unfortunate's legs, cutting off his scream of agony a little too quickly for Holliday's liking.

"Corpsman!" he screamed in fear, his voice trembling.

"He's dead already," growled Miller harshly. "Shut your damn mouth and keep firing."

The young private stared in disbelief. Had Miller seen so much at the Makin Atoll that he didn't care about others? Then again, he had been a POW…

His thoughts were quickly interrupted by a Japanese soldier firing a Type-99, the light machine-gun for the Japanese troops. He quickly returned fire with his Thompson, missing his mark entirely with the first burst of fire. The second burst caught the Japanese soldier in his throat. Blood spurted out of the open wounds, and the enemy soldier fell to the sand, clutching at his throat as if to cover up the horrific injuries he sustained.

Holliday stared in shock. Was it this easy to kill someone? Was a normal human's life this fragile? It had been so easy… He didn't even want to look into the dead eyes of the soldier. He knew that just killing the Japanese soldier would haunt him for the rest of his days.

After the exchange of fire had ended, he quickly moved towards a bunch of tall grass, checking his weapon. He then heard a scream that he couldn't decipher, and he saw a camouflaged soldier aim at him with an Arisaka bayonet. Holliday dove to the side, his reflexes kicking in. Several other screams told him that others were not so lucky.

The Japanese soldier connected on a savage kick to Holliday's head, dizzying him. He lay on the ground looking up at the soldier. He raised the rifle to skewer the young marine. Holliday then saw the soldier slump to the ground, his chest covered in blood. Sullivan then pulled him to his feet.

"You're fine," he growled. "Looks like you witnessed your first Banzai charge."

Holliday stared at the commanding officer, not knowing what the hell he was talking about. A loud machine gun burst interrupted them. Sullivan joined Polonsky behind the cover of a tree, while other soldiers crowded around a supply truck. Already the ground was covered in bodies, and still more soldiers were coming and dying from machine guns or grenades.

Holliday wondered how there were this many soldiers as he looked around for Roebuck. He then saw the toughened corporal running into a bunker along with Miller. The young marine stared in rage at the two. Were they running from the battle?

"You fucking cowards!" he screamed angrily. "Get back here, dammit!"

Holliday then felt a pain in his stomach. He collapsed to the ground, looking in shock at the blood. He then felt a sharp pain in the right part of his chest. He tried to crawl back to the cover, but his chest felt like it was on fire. He felt more pain in his stomach and his pelvis. He noticed a soldier dragging him behind cover, but he almost didn't care. He knew he had been hit.

The corners of his eyes were tinged with red. His chest was red, his stomach was red, the ground was red; everything was red. Only the sky, a surprising black in the middle of the day, wasn't red. He couldn't hear the machine gun firing, nor could he hear the grenades exploding. A soldier was by his side, but Holliday noted grimly that nothing in the world could save him now. The bullet wounds felt as if they were being burned by a slow, roasting fire, cooking his bloody flesh as if it was a tender sirloin steak.

_Make it stop… I don't care how it stops. Just stop it, please…_

Holliday remembered the religion on his dogtags. Was he just the product of some cosmic coincidence…or was there really a god watching everything with a plan for him? He wouldn't have cared about it earlier, but now that he was…well, it seemed to matter a whole lot more.

As darkness went from the corners of his eyes to all but the center of them, he realized that the Devil wanted him after all. He just didn't get him at first. All he had to do was wait patiently until Holliday had made a fatal mistake. His vision blurred until only darkness remained.


End file.
